Witness to the Revolution

by Clara Bingham

  Joe Lewis (born 1951) was shot twice as a student at Kent State—once in the abdomen and once in the lower left leg—by members of the Ohio National Guard on May 4, 1970. Today Lewis is a public employee in Scappoose, Oregon. He travels to high schools, colleges, and universities around the country to speak about the shootings at Kent State and the Vietnam peace movement.

  Greil Marcus (born 1945) is one of the country’s most respected and prolific music and cultural critics. A San Francisco native and graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, Marcus got his start writing music reviews for Rolling Stone in the 1960s. His insightful, highbrow writing can be found in innumerable articles and reviews and more than twenty books, including Mystery Train (1975) and his most recent, The History of Rock ’n’ Roll in Ten Songs (2014).

  Tom McCarthy (born 1930) was detective supervisor for the city of Madison, Wisconsin, police force, where he worked from 1953 to 1986. McCarthy is not shy about admitting his animosity for the student protesters in Madison: “They hated me and I hated them.”

  Country Joe McDonald (born 1942) (né Joseph Allen McDonald) is a rock musician who was the lead singer of the Berkeley-based Country Joe and the Fish. The band’s most popular song, “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag” (1965), became an anthem of the antiwar movement. McDonald has recorded thirty-three albums, most recently Time Flies By (2012).

  Phyllis Menken (born 1951) is a lawyer who lives in Boston. She lived in political asylum for American draft resisters and military deserters in Sweden with her boyfriend from 1970 to 1972.

  Ralph Metzner (born 1936) is an academic, psychologist, and writer. In the early 1960s, as a graduate student at Harvard University, Metzner conducted research on LSD with Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (later Ram Dass). Their research is widely credited with introducing psychedelic drugs to the American counterculture. Metzner is cofounder and president of the Green Earth Foundation, an educational nonprofit “dedicated to the healing and harmonizing of the relationships between humanity and the Earth.”

  David Mixner (born 1946) is a civil rights activist, political strategist, and author. In 1969 he founded the Vietnam Moratorium Committee with Sam Brown, David Hawk, and Marge Sklencar, and the group successfully organized the largest antiwar protest in American history on October 15, 1969. Later in his career as an LGBT and human rights activist, Newsweek named Mixner “the most powerful gay man in America.” He has worked as a strategist and fundraiser on seventy-five Democratic political campaigns, is an active writer and blogger, and wrote the acclaimed memoir Stranger Among Friends (1997).

  Richard Moose (1932–2015) was a military and foreign policy expert who worked on the National Security Council as staff secretary under Presidents Johnson and Nixon. From 1970 to 1975, as a staff member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chaired by J. William Fulbright, Moose specialized in the war in Southeast Asia. Moose later served as assistant secretary of state for African affairs under President Jimmy Carter and undersecretary of state for management under President Bill Clinton.

  Robin Morgan (born 1941) is a poet, author, academic, feminist activist, and journalist. She is recognized as a founder of contemporary “second wave” feminism. Morgan helped start New York Radical Women and Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell (W.I.T.C.H.) in the late 1960s. From 1990 to 1994 Morgan was editor in chief of Ms. magazine. She has published more than twenty books, including the acclaimed anthologies Sisterhood Is Powerful (1970), Sisterhood Is Global (1984), and Sisterhood Is Forever: The Women’s Anthology for a New Millennium (2003). She is founder and president of the Sisterhood Is Global Institute, and cofounder (with Gloria Steinem and Jane Fonda) of the Women’s Media Center.

  Roger Morris (born 1937) is a foreign policy expert, investigative journalist, and author. Morris served on the National Security Council under Presidents Johnson and Nixon. In 1970 he resigned from the NSC because he opposed the U.S. invasion of Cambodia. Morris went on to work as a legislative advisor to Senator George McGovern and a director of policy studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He has written books about Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, Alexander Haig, and the Clintons. His 1990 biography, Richard Milhous Nixon: The Rise of an American Politician (1989), won the National Book Award Silver Medal.

  Lauree Moss (born 1946) is a life coach, teacher of body psychotherapy, and former professor of psychology and somatic therapy at Antioch University in San Francisco. On May 9, 1970, she attended a pre-demonstration gathering at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., when President Nixon made an unexpected visit at dawn. A photograph of Nixon talking with Moss that morning was widely published and has gained iconic status.

  Bobby Muller (born 1946) is one of America’s most well-known advocates for Vietnam veterans. Muller enlisted in 1967 and served as a lieutenant in Vietnam. He was wounded in combat in April 1969 and paralyzed from the chest down. The neglect and inadequate care that Muller experienced at a veterans hospital when he came home motivated him to spend the rest of his career fighting for veterans’ rights. Muller is former president of the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, which he founded in 1980. In 1981 he led the first American delegation of veterans back to Vietnam and successfully lobbied Congress for legislation compensating vets for Vietnam-related illnesses such as PTSD and Agent Orange poisoning. Muller also cofounded the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 for its work in Cambodia.

  John Murtagh, Jr. (born 1960), is a litigation and government affairs attorney and former Yonkers, New York, council member. In February 1970, when Murtagh was nine years old, the Weathermen bombed his family’s home because his father, Judge John Murtagh, Sr., was presiding over the Black Panther 21 trial.

  Ben Post (born 1945) was a journalism student at Kent State University and a reporter for the Record-Courier when he witnessed and wrote about the May 4, 1970, shootings. Post arrived at Kent State as a student after serving three years in the army, stationed in Germany. After the shootings, he worked as a researcher for James A. Michener on his book Kent State: What Happened and Why (1971). He is the former managing editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal.

  Raymond “Ray” Price, Jr. (born 1930), was the chief speechwriter for President Richard Nixon. He later wrote a memoir With Nixon (1977) and assisted Nixon in writing several of his books. From 1957 to 1964 Price served on the editorial staff of the New York Herald Tribune and was editorial page editor from 1964 to 1966.

  Carol Griggs Randall (born 1945) was a charismatic fixture in mid-to-late-1960s California counterculture. Active in the effort to turn on the world and achieve universal peace, Randall joined her husband, John Griggs, and his friend Michael Randall and others in forming the Brotherhood of Eternal Love. Griggs died in 1969 from a psilocybin overdose, and Carol married Randall in 1970. A poet, Carol founded Mystic Artists, a loosely organized group of visionaries who gathered and exhibited at Mystic Arts World, the Laguna Beach shop that served as the hub of psychedelic culture from 1967 to 1970. Today the woman known as the Godmother of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love works with her husband, Michael, at their custom jewelry store in Marin County, California.

  Michael Randall (born 1943) was a founding member of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, a secretive group of surfer drug dealers from Laguna, California, who have been called the “hippie mafia.” They started out importing marijuana from Mexico inside surfboards, and grew into an international drug cartel that imported thousands of pounds of hashish to America from Afghanistan, India, and other countries and manufactured, sold, and gave away its own potent brand of LSD, Orange Sunshine. The late-sixties effort was part of a master plan to “turn on the world” and start a “psychedelic revolution.” After living as a fugitive for twelve years and serving a five-year prison sentence, Randall is now a jeweler and lives with his wife, Carol, in Marin County, California.

  Richard Reeves (born 1936) is a veteran political journalist, author, and sy
ndicated columnist. His long and varied career spanned from chief political correspondent for The New York Times, to chief correspondent for PBS Frontline, to national editor and columnist for Esquire. He wrote a syndicated column for thirty-five years and published fifteen books, including an acclaimed biography of Nixon, President Nixon: Alone in the White House (2001). He is currently a senior lecturer at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California.

  Steven Reiner (born 1949) was editor in chief of the University of Wisconsin–Madison campus newspaper, The Daily Cardinal, in the late 1960s. Reiner is director of broadcast and digital journalism at Stony Brook University in New York. He is a multiple-Emmy-winning journalist, editor, and producer. He has worked at NBC, ABC, NPR, and as a producer for CBS’s 60 Minutes.

  Barry Romo (born 1947) is a Vietnam veteran and peace activist. Romo enlisted in the army and served as a platoon leader at the age of nineteen in the 196th Light Infantry Brigade and Americal Division in 1967–68. He was awarded a Bronze Star for saving wounded men under his command during an attack by enemy fire. In 1968 he was discharged from the army, and in 1970 he became the national coordinator for Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Currently Romo is the leader of the Chicago chapter of VVAW.

  Vivian Rothstein (born 1946), a feminist and social justice and peace activist, started out as a community organizer in the Mississippi Freedom Summer project of 1965. An active member of SDS, Rothstein traveled to North Vietnam in 1967 with six other peace activists and in 1968 helped organize the Jeannette Rankin Brigade—the first national women’s march against the war. She is currently the director of special projects at LAANE, a social and economic justice advocacy nonprofit in Los Angeles.

  Mark Rudd (born 1947) was chairman of the Columbia University SDS chapter in 1968, during the student rebellion, and the organization’s national secretary in 1969. Rudd is one of the founders of the Weathermen, the militant faction of SDS. Wanted on federal charges for bombing and conspiracy, he lived as a fugitive from 1970 to 1977. When he surrendered to authorities, all charges against him were dropped because of FBI illegalities. Rudd taught mathematics at Central New Mexico Community College in Albuquerque for twenty-six years. He has published a memoir, Underground: My Life with the SDS and the Weathermen (2009). Rudd remains a political organizer and an environmental and peace activist.

  Thelma Schoonmaker (born 1940) is a three-time Oscar-winning film editor who has worked with director Martin Scorsese on all of his films for more than forty years. Her work as editor and assistant director on Michael Wadleigh’s Woodstock documentary is credited with helping popularize documentary film, and solidified the legacy of the storied festival.

  Wayne Smith (born 1951) is a Vietnam veteran who joined the army in 1968 and became a combat medic. Wayne earned a BA in psychology after returning from Vietnam and has spent the rest of his career helping veterans heal the wounds caused by war. Smith worked with Bobby Muller at the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation and is a co-recipient of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize for the organization’s work to ban land mines. In 1998, Smith bicycled 1,200 miles across Vietnam with twenty American veterans to promote peace and reconciliation.

  Paul Soglin (born 1945) was active in the civil rights and antiwar movements as a student at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. In 1962 Soglin was elected treasurer of the university’s chapter of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, SNCC. He has been mayor of Madison three times. He was first elected at the age of twenty-eight, in 1973, and served until 1979. He was then reelected and served from 1989 to 1997. Soglin loved the job so much that he ran again for mayor in 2011 and won.

  Rena Steinzor (born 1949) was the first female editor in chief of University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Daily Cardinal in 1970–71. Steinzor is a professor at the University of Maryland School of Law, specializing in environmental law, and she is the president of the Center for Progressive Reform. Her most recent book, Why Not Jail? (2014), argues for tougher treatment for corporate crime.

  Stephen Stills (born 1945) was a member of the Reserve Officer Training Corps during his high school years, but feigned insanity to avoid the Vietnam War draft. The singer, songwriter, and virtuoso guitar player is probably best known for his work with the bands Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills & Nash. His songs “For What It’s Worth” and “Love the One You’re With” are both iconic sixties anthems.

  Oliver Stone (born 1946) is an Oscar-winning filmmaker and Vietnam veteran. Stone served in the army in Vietnam from 1967 to 1968; he was wounded twice and earned a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart. Soon after coming home, Stone studied film under Martin Scorsese at New York University. Stone is credited with writing or directing more than twenty feature-length films. He is known for portraying critical or alternative narratives of recent American history, including Platoon (1986), the first of the Vietnam trilogy; Born on the Fourth of July (1989); JFK (1991); Natural Born Killers (1994); Heaven and Earth (1993); Nixon (1995); and Snowden (2015).

  Margery Tabankin (born 1948) was deeply involved in antiwar and civil rights activities as a student at the University of Wisconsin–Madison from 1965 to 1969. She joined SDS and later became the first woman president of the National Student Association. Tabankin is a peace and social justice activist who has spent most of her career helping wealthy individuals implement their philanthropic and political giving. She is the former executive director of the Hollywood Women’s Political Committee and serves on the board of the Streisand Foundation and People for the American Way.

  Alison Teal (born 1945), after graduating from Smith College, worked for antiwar causes, among them Eugene McCarthy’s 1968 presidential campaign (where she met her husband Sam Brown) and the Moratorium Committee. Teal is a journalist, blogger, photojournalist, and political activist. In 1970 she worked as a young aide to New York City mayor John Lindsay. During the Carter administration, she served as a special assistant to health, education, and welfare secretary Patricia Harris, and to health and human services secretary Donna Shalala during the Clinton administration.

  Michael Uhl (born 1944) is a Vietnam veteran, peace activist, and independent scholar. He served as a first lieutenant in Vietnam in 1968–69. When he came home, he entered New York University as a PhD candidate in linguistics. As a member of the Citizens’ Commission of Inquiry on U.S. War Crimes in Vietnam (CCI), Uhl played a key role in organizing the National Veterans Inquiry and the Winter Soldier Investigations. In 1970 he testified at the International Enquiry on U.S. War Crimes, held in Stockholm, Sweden. Uhl currently serves on the board of directors of Veterans for Peace. His writing has appeared in The Nation, the Boston Sunday Globe, Forbes, and In These Times. He wrote a memoir about his experience during and after the war: Vietnam Awakening: My Journey from Combat to the Citizens’ Commission of Inquiry on U.S. War Crimes in Vietnam (2007).

  Steve Wasserman (born 1952) was a peace activist in high school and college in Berkeley, California. He is the publisher and executive editor of Heyday, and the former executive editor at large for Yale University Press and editor of the Los Angeles Times Book Review and New Republic Books. Wasserman writes about literature and politics for a variety of publications; he has served as editorial director of Times Books and publisher of Hill & Wang, and is a past partner at the Kneerim & Williams Literary Agency.

  Susan Werbe (born 1946) became involved in antiwar activism in college at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1969 Werbe joined the Moratorium Committee and ran its speakers bureau for the October 15 and November 15, 1969, moratoriums. She is an award-winning television producer and has received two Primetime Emmy Awards. Werbe also won a Peabody Award in 2005 for Voices of Civil Rights. Currently, she is executive producer, programming, for the History Channel.

  Cathy Wilkerson (born 1945) was active in the civil rights movement, SDS, and the Weathermen. After graduating from Swarthmore College in 1966, Wilkerson worked for SDS in Chicago and Washington, D.C. She was editor o
f New Left Notes and elected to the SDS National Interim Council. Wilkerson’s father, James, was an advertising executive who owned the Greenwich Village townhouse where Weathermen members accidentally exploded a bomb, killing three Weathermen members and destroying the house, on March 6, 1970. After the explosion, Wilkerson, who was in the house at the time and survived the blast, became a fugitive and studied how to make explosives, working closely with the Weather Underground’s chief bomb maker, Ron Fliegelman (the father of her child).* In 1980 Wilkerson turned herself in to authorities and pled guilty to charges of unlawful possession of dynamite; she served eleven months in the Bedford Hills Correctional Center. She later earned a master’s degree in mathematics education and spent twenty years teaching math to high school and adult education students in Brooklyn, New York.

  Howard Wolf (born 1938) is a concert producer, promoter, and talent buyer. During the 1960s and 1970s, Wolf worked with prominent artists such as the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, the Doors, Cream, and Jimi Hendrix, and produced up to forty concerts a year. He teaches courses about the concert touring business at UCLA Extension.

  * * *

  * Burrough, Days of Rage, p. 126.

  FOR JOE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Born in 1946, a birth year that thrust her into the cultural and political crosshairs of change and rebellion, the youngest of my father’s four siblings, Eleanor Bingham, embraced her baby boomer birthright to the fullest. A hippie extraordinaire, Eleanor was, among other things, a seamstress on Carnaby Street, where she tailored Mick Jagger’s pants, and a videographer for the Grateful Dead and TVTV. She counted among her friends legends like Bear Owsley and Abbie Hoffman. As a child, I worshipped Eleanor for her charisma, far-out clothing, and big-hearted free spirit. I still do. In many ways, she is the reason why I decided to embark on this book project.